This decision comes after the department ordered the deaths of the last two remaining members of the Old Profanity Territory (OPT) family and the last three wolves of the Togo Pack. There are just four or five adult members of the Smackout family left.

"The goal of lethal removal ... is to manage wolf-livestock conflicts to minimize livestock losses without undermining the recovery of a sustainable wolf population," according to the WDFW.

But lethal removal of endangered wolves is very controversial. And for the first time in Washington, three families would be almost totally destroyed at once.

"WDFW has been killing wolves to deter conflict since 2012 when the agency wiped out the entire Wedge Pack, yet depredations on livestock continue," Maggie Howell, executive director of the Wolf Conservation Center (WCC), told The Dodo. "Peer-reviewed research demonstrates that killing predators is not only an ineffective solution to deter depredation on cows, but it can even result in increased attacks."

While Washington has killing wolves to try to disrupt predatory behavior for the last several years, WDFW Director Kelly Susewind admitted that “this is the worst year we’ve ever had" in an interview with the Spokesman-Review. “I know we’ve never had three packs that are above the threshold for lethal removal," Susewind said.

A century ago, gray wolves were nearly wiped out across the country because of hunting and habitat loss.
In the 1960s, the introduction of endangered species protections helped bring them back from the brink of extinction. But when the ranching industry gets involved, the WDFW is forced to make a choice.

"Washington has over a million head of cattle and approximately 120 wolves," Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense, told The Dodo. "Killing wolves will not solve this problem. Keeping cattle away from core wolf territories on public and private lands will."

Howell pointed out that killing wolves is rooted more in a thirst for retribution rather than reason. "One of the oldest and most primitive responses to conflict with livestock is to kill the predators, even if they are already rare and/or threatened with extinction," she said.

Fahy is trying to get Washington Governor Jay Inslee to weigh in on the issue. "[He] has been completely silent," Fahy said. "It’s time to wake him up."